Willis hits the news stands in London

Christopher Booker’s Telegraph column used Willis Eschenbach’s recent Open Letter to Nature as the basis for the Sunday column:

Booker writes:

On Friday came the fullest and most expert dissection of the Nature paper so far, published on the Watts Up With That website by Willis Eschenbach, a very experienced computer modeller. His findings are devastating. After detailed analysis of the study’s multiple flaws, he sums up by accusing Nature of “trying to pass off the end-result of a long daisy-chain of specifically selected, untested, unverified, un-investigated computer models as valid, falsifiable, peer-reviewed science”.

Interesting using images of New Orleans (Floodplain basin). Of course, it was largely due to poorly placed/maintained levees which failed and, therefore, lead to the flooding in that area. Apparently, it was mostly the poor, lower, end of town which was most affected and no property now can be insured, even if they could afford it, in that area. So many properties, areas and what were communities, are now left to nature.

Also interesting the many stories in the MSM, both in New Zealand and Australia for me at that time, were touting “Katrina” as proof of AGW, and it will get worse. It hasn’t. Sill, sad for the people of the region. And too like Queensland (AU – Tropical cyclone prone zone) and Christchurch (NZ – Earthquake pone zone).

Willis passes to ball to Christopher Booker. Coach Anthony Watts signals a 3 point shot from the sidelines. Booker shoots. SCORE!! 3 points! But wait, Booker was fouled (mouthed) by RC! The independent thinker team of Willis has a chance to make it a 4 point play.

I keep seeing Hurricane Katrina being cited an an example of flooding which may or may not, dependant upon who is commenting, be caused by global warming. My understanding is that Katrina was a regular hurricane and that the flooding was a result of a breach in the poorly maintained sea defences.

Either I am mistaken or there is a lot of sloppy journalism out there.

Once again, an excellent piece by Christopher Booker, which is in the printed edition of the Sunday Telegraph.
I read the ST every Sunday morning with a certain amount of trepidation, for I know Booker’s column is at the end. Very often it is filled with appalling things which often make me very angry, not really what I want on a quiet Sunday morning. He has done incredible work, reporting on the workings of the corrupt, anti-democratic and wasteful European Union and, of course, on the catastrophe of Mann-made global warming. He has also reported extensively on what can only be described as state-sanctioned child kidnapping operated by our police and social services, something that you might expect in Gaddafi’s Libya but not in our own democracy. It’s a national disgrace and I have the utmost respect for Booker.

Of course, we already knew that this study published in Nature is junk science and yet another disgrace for Britain. That graph is worth a hundred computer models (or Playstation models as Monckton would say).

But I didn’t know that two of the co-authors work for Risk Management Solutions, a company that works in insurance. It’s also a company that uses global warming alarmism to boost its profits. With this in mind, there may be a case for financial fraud as well as scientific fraud.
Chris

Of course, let’s not forget the observational evidence of “rotting ice” that global warming explorers, Catlin Arctic Survey, found in 2009.

The annual farcical scientific adventure to find the evidence for global warming in the Arctic is sponsored by …Catlin Group.

“Catlin Group Limited is an international specialty property and casualty insurer and re-insurer, writing more than 30 classes of business. Catlin operates through six underwriting hubs, serving the largest insurance markets around the globe.”

Catlin Group’s mottos is Underwriting Ambition. Maybe all those global warming catastrophists might want to file a claim for their lost credibility.

Surely, the only proper course of action is that Nature, or the authors, withraw this horribly flawed paper. It is not a question of being pro or anti CAGW, it is a question of adherence to the scientific method. In this case the question can be answered by anyone with a resonable understanding of science.

If the paper is withdrawn all concerned could walk away with integrity.

By m.p. – Feb 24, 2011 – 6:53 PM
A study by the Spanish Oceanography Institute shows the rate of increase has doubled since the turn of the century

The level of the Mediterranean Sea will rise by up to 60 cms by the end of this century, according to a study carried out by the IEO, the Spanish Oceanography Institute.

The study shows the impact of climate change on the body of water from 1943 until 2008, El Mundo reports.

The level has already increased by 20 cms since the 19th Century, and the study, ‘Climatic change in the Spanish Mediterranean’, has shown that the rate of increase has doubled since the turn of the century and is now, in the 21st Century, at 3mm a year.

The sea is also more saline and its temperature has risen.

Increased salinity comes from lack of rain and from reservoirs and dams which are reducing the flow of fresh river water into the sea.

I think Katrina is a good example – the question is: would we lower the future impact of such hurricanes and avoid “Katrina’s” in the future if we do one of the following:
a) don’t drive SUVs any more, have warm water & electricity only when the wind blows and the sun shines
b) build the dam that was prevented by “save our wetlands” initiative

Christopher Booker is the only journalist in the UK as far as I can see who writes a column consistently against the bogus science of global warming. Why he hasn’t got the sack yet for reducing the circulation of the Sunday Telegraph is beyond me.

The Mediterranean is a remnant ocean being crushed by the passage of Africa into Europe. It is tectonically highly active, with rapid rates of uplift and subsidence. Historically the Mediterranean been completely dry or flooded. Sea level in the Mediterranean is driven by geology.

A note to Anthony about the headline. Despite the efforts of the metropolitan “elite” to ignore the rest of the country, the Daily Telegraph is a national newspaper and it hits the news stands over the whole of the UK (on the same day providing the mail coaches are not held up by highwaymen ;-) ).
Us provincials are a bit sensitive about the way the rest of the world seems to think London, England and the UK are the same place. London is the place where they talk about doing things, the rest of the country is where the work is done (said with tongue firmly in cheek).

Reply to Robert Stevenson
Presumably it is a deduction from consensus opinion that singles out Christopher Booker’s weekly missive as the cause of the circulation decline for the Sunday Telegraph. No need then to consider the overall decline in circulation figures for Sunday papers over all as being in any way connected.

St. Lucia’s flood (Sint-Luciavloed) was a storm tide that affected the Netherlands and Northern Germany on December 14, 1287 (the day after St. Lucia Day) when a dike broke during a storm, killing approximately 50,000 to 80,000 people……..

Although not known by the name of St Lucia, the same storm also had devastating effects on the other side of the water in England. The city of Winchelsea on Romney Marsh was destroyed (later rebuilt on higher ground). Nearby Broomhill was also destroyed. The course of the nearby river Rother was diverted away from New Romney, which was left a mile from the coast, ending its role as a port. The Rother ran instead to sea at Rye, prompting its rise as a port. A cliff collapsed at Hastings, blocking the harbour and ending its role as a trade centre, though it continued as a centre for fishing. Parts of Norfolk were flooded, eg the village of Hickling where 180 died and the water rose a foot above the high alter in the church. The port of Dunwich in Suffolk began its decline. Whitstable in Kent also reported to have been hit by the surge.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucia's_flood

“Either I am mistaken or there is a lot of sloppy journalism out there.”
You are without doubt correct in your assumption. But it doesn’t stop there. Almost every field and discipline exhibits sloppiness and poor practice compared with the rigour and application of previous generations.
We sowed the zephyr of education with left wing terpitude and now reap the boreal draughts of careless conjecture from degree bearing children with undisciplined minds.
It may well be that their hubristic ignorance rather than CO2 carries the seeds of their much trumpeted, yet conditional, future destruction.

Once Booker shines the light on the money flows, you realise that what might have been passed off as enthusiastic but misguided computer modelling is, in reality a deliberate mugging of the data to bolster a view that the authors want the world to see.
Shame on the Authors and behold Nature shamed and tainted by association and complicity.
As Willis pointed out, if they’d adhered to their own rules, they would have avoided being compromised like this.

I started to read the DTel as the best way to keep up with how the fascists were thinking, but these days it is about as conservative (let alone right wing) as the present UK administration.

Lean and Gray (!) can’t compete with the brilliant Matt’s pocket cartoons, which are often worth the cover price on their own, but I see them as being on the ‘funnies’ side of the paper, as, for example, dear Louise’s recent assertion that in CCS the CO2 is sequestered ‘in caverns’…

I have for years been trying to emphasize the profit motives of the insurance industry when it comes to scare mongering and climate alarmism. The scarier the problem, the higher the risk, …the higher the insurance rates.

In multiple websites now conveniently gone there was evidence of companies like AIG funding, through satellite arms, studies of hurricane potential. These studies showed, much to the pleasure of the funding entity, that hurricanes would become more frequent and more intense with global warming (the term in use at the time).

Many will recall the furor in Florida over the dramatic hikes in hurricane insurance rates that stemmed from these studies. I lament saving the URLs for the proof and not the content of the insurance industry’s own proof of my claims. Fortunately, Mr. Booker will bring some light upon them.

Republicans and oil companies are continually bashed as being greedy corporate deniers of science. I’m not sure I understand the difference if the promoters of AGW have a multi-billion dollar industry thriving on increased taxes from the generation and use of a gas necessary for life, a very profitable network of government supported grant research machines, and spin off private sector beneficiaries consisting of “green” energy firms and insurance conglomerates.

Having spent a 35 year career at the Boeing Co., I can vouch for Willis’s thought process comparing computer modeling between Boeing and that described in the Nature article. In my experience, Boeing uses thousands of such models – – but each have limited scope and are overseen by a small Group that itself does testing or is allied with a test Group. Now, I must admit: I have been retired for a decade and am certainly not up to date on the latest modeling. But my impression from Willis’s article was that the flood modeling in question was an integrated PacMan creation transfigured into an uncharted fictional universe.

I see an important distinction however, between the Boeing modeling and the flood modeling. The consequences to the modelers is relatively swift, if the airplane design is proven defective by the tests – – or worse, lives are lost as a result. In contrast, there appear to be few consequences from the most extravagant misadventures in Climate modeling. This is likely due in part to the inability to truly check on the reality of much of the input to the climate model. This matter gets exponentially worse as Model A output is used to drive Model B, thence Models C,D,E etc. I think Willis’s challenge to publication of such studies is a splendid service, and could be extended to some sort of more stringent qualification of “models” from which results could be published and still be referred to as scientific literature. This would ultimately save multiple national treasuries billions of dollars on various foolish undertakings in the name of science.

Actually, I think Lars P (see comment 2/27 at 4:40am) captures the point very succinctly in his 2 alternate options for protecting against future Katrinas: a) don’t drive SUVs any more, have warm water & electricity only when the wind blows and the sun shines vs b) build the dam that was prevented by “save our wetlands” initiative.

Isn’t it up to scientists with some common sense to protect the public from others without ? Kudos in this regard to WUWT.

Yes insurance companies and wind farms will make money from climate change, but so what? This is capitalism. I thought everyone round here loved making money?

Oil conglomerates and mining companies make vast amounts from maintaining the status-quo concerning climate change. But they’re never subjected to this level of moral ‘analysis’. Just why is that? Why does Brooker never analyse their motivations?

Rainfall unchanging? Its not quite the issue though is it? The issue is extreme weather events and their increase.

Average yearly rainfall may not be increasing, but the number of dry spells are, as are the number of severe downpours, extreme rain fall in a short period of time. It is this which leads to flooding. This is obvious to anyone who remains to pause on the above text for just a second.

The continuance to criticise peer reviewed science with bloggers, (with their own particular interests & motivations), continues unabated. Peer review is not perfect, but its infinitely better than unaccountable bloggers being used to justify government policy that will affect millions of lives.

And this irrational suspicion of computer modelling, its like watching an old colonial film with the natives howling at the ‘boomsticks’. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you have to be scared of it.

Computer modelling is tested against previous real life situations and events. This fact is repeated over and over and over again on these comment boards, of course its just ignored. Facts just don’t matter round here. Computer models are not faultless, but they’re far from the stuff of imbeciles and charlatans as you infer.

As for Watts up with that: Anthony Watt is a weather forecaster and holds false and discredited credentials, for example his ‘American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval’ – It doesn’t even require a bachelor.

Further, WUWT? is supported by the Heartlands Institute, a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems”. Pet projects include: Genetically engineered crops and products; the privatization of public services; the introduction of school vouchers; the deregulation of health care insurance etc.

Further the Heartlands Institute has close ties to the tobacco industry and received $676,500 (unadjusted for inflation) from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006. Since 2007 the Heartland Institute’s funding has been made secret.

Just why is it that Brooker can’t apply the same level of criticism to his sources as to his targets? Surely good objective journalism demands this, as does common sense and ethical responsibilities?

I can do it with Google and ten minutes, and I’m not even being paid!

It only begins to make sense if you see Brooker as
1) A bad journalist, or
2) A shill peddling bias & misinformation for some other hereto unknown reason

We keep seeing that picture of New Orleans after Katrina. Katrina was a powerful storm, but New Orleans did not flood because of torrential rain. New Orleans flooded the day after Katrina passed, because the levee system was of flawed design and became compromised.

Stonyground says:
February 27, 2011 at 2:46 am
“I keep seeing Hurricane Katrina being cited an an example of flooding which may or may not, dependant upon who is commenting, be caused by global warming. My understanding is that Katrina was a regular hurricane and that the flooding was a result of a breach in the poorly maintained sea defences.”

Right on the money, Sir. The flooding occurred because a levee failed. The part of the city that flooded is four feet below sea level. The Old City, the Crescent City that was built on a crescent ridge next to the Mississippi, did not flood. Could there be a lesson about flood plains somewhere in all this?

Some may call me a cynic, but what I see here is a possible move by Risk Management Solutions (RMS) to add demand enhancement and cartel management to the list of services it provides to the insurance industry.

When RMS causes a paper to be published in NATURE that reports that any estimate of probable losses due to floods that is based on the historical record systematically understates the the actual losses that should be expected, it increases the demand for flood insurance. This is a service that is economically identical to advertising. The same paper also provides a strong incentive for insurance companies to price such insurance at a price higher than that which would exist under competition using the historical flood records, as it is unlikely that insurance executives would write flood insurance at a price that would be expected to generate a net loss when calculated with the ” most current science”. This is economically identical to a very clever price fixing scheme, one that involves no collusion amongst the principles.

The NATURE paper will result in higher premiums for the insured and greater profits for insurance companies regardless of whether it is science or quackery. If I had to bet, it would be on quackery. If this was actual science I believe that more likely than not, it would have been discovered without either the help of RMS or the inhuman data waterboarding chronicled by Willis.

RMS is playing with our money and the insurance companies love it. The insurance companies immediately abandoned their traditional historical data for risk assessment and embraced the RMS model instead, which resulted in huge profits for the insurers in the last six-years. The first local editorial about this scam came out on Nov. 14 in the Herald Tribune of Sarasota, FL:

Because of this my home insurance went up from ~ $1800 per year to around $7000! And there is no choice of insurance companies, everything is done through a state insurance pool. Now RMS is planning to release a new model this spring that significantly raises the hurricane wind risks to insurance companies and so we could be looking at another 200% increase.

I read C.Booker’s book. It is very good. It is good the truth is coming out now, even if with drips and drags. It has to come out now that everyone in the UK is beginning to realize how expensive “alternative” energy is or will be compared to energy from coal or gas. And with that comes the story that our carbon footprint (CO2) is really good for earth…http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
(just remove the heavy metals, CO and SO2 from the exhaust please)

Vladimir says:
February 27, 2011 at 8:28 am
“Things like that happen when cities are built below sea level.”

Absolutely. It’s not rocket science. And NO is built below sea level. And in a hurricane prone area. The shape of the Missippi delta is governed by hurricanes. Katrina was one such shape-changer.

I remember seeing text books which plotted the shape of the delta over the last 200 years or so. The new delta was plotted after every hurricane. I’ll try to find that plot and post it up here. It used to be easy to find. I’ve looked for it again over the last few years but haven’t found it…

At least on certain blogs dissent is allowed, for example here. It makes one wonder why it is not so open on other blogs. If you are certain of your science then you should be able to prove it and to be able to counter, using scientific discourse, any theories that challenge your own.
But then so much of the language thrown around about climate would not be acceptable in a primary school let alone a place of higher education. It would also seem that complicated computer simulations are damaging science in the wider publics view. If you can not show me why something is the way it is, or at least allow other scientists to check it, then why should I trust you with billions of dollars of taxpayers money? But then some actors in this arena (I can not call them scientists) are so full of their own ego and importance that they seem to think that actually explaining the science is no longer necessary and no challenges are now permitted. Instead we get propaganda and posturing. This surely should be challenged, especially if they are being funded by the tax payer. Maybe we need to clear the decks of these protagonists and open the field to scientists who want to do and are willing to be seen doing, real science. If, as the present cadre believe, that knowing the truth about the climate so important, why are they stopping real scientific discourse? Or do we really have to wait till nature itself gives us the answers. We have already gone through this with the global winter fiasco back in the seventies. If history repeats itself, will science be able to recover?
Damn, it is hard trying to be open minded!

Interesting that clintboon could figure out in only ten minutes that WUWT is “supported” by the Heartland institute. Maybe next time he should try for twelve minutes.

Quoting Sourcewatch as a source about AGW is less reliable that quoting Wikipedia.

For readers who haven’t run across Sourcewatch, sometime go there and search for a couple of pairs of names, one right and one left, and judge for yourself if the site has a bias. For extra credit google sourcewatch and soros.

But even Sourcewatch only said that Anthony was listed as a speaker at Heartland events, not “supported” by.

Since the mid 70’s until today has changed that trend with a sharp rise in temperatures. The average increase in sea surface temperature for the 1948-2007 period varies, depending on the area of our Mediterranean coast, between 0 º C and 0.5 º C, while air temperature increased between 0.4 ° C and 0.9 º C.

Although the years 1998 and 2005 are among the warmest globally since 1850, there have been strong variations in the oceanographic properties of the Mediterranean, for winter 2004/2005 was a cold anomaly in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea so intense that there were deep water temperatures similar to those obtained in the early twentieth century,

It is a water planet.
When the water gets below 32 F it is ice.
Wnen the water gets above 32 F it is water once more.
4 something billions of years of that into a computer model you have climate record.
Still chaos is in control even if wish to think other wise.

“One of the recent comments on Booker’s article lays into Anthony:”
________________________________________________________
The Telegraph trolls are some of the most vile I have ever encountered. They’re as bad as the “regulars” at ThinkProgress and ClimateProgress. I love to read Delingpole’s stuff but the comment threads become so quickly polluted with troll dung as to be unreadable.

Anthony should be pleased to learn he has a stack of checks from Heartland he didn’t even know about. What was even funnier (to me) is that all the vile things this troll accused Heartland as advocating are things I, too, advocate. Energy and mining concerns produce goods society needs. The insurance industry sells a service based on actuarial risk. Wind farms are legalized theft because of their subsidies. The cocaine trade is purely a capitalistic enterprise but that doesn’t make it right.

As you avoid the warmist faction at the Daily Telegraph, you will have missed a Geoffrey Lean item this week that, to my astonishment, gave publicity to a recent report that the huge methane emissions in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the BP accident had disappeared. He even said it cast doubt on the tipping point scares about the thawing of the permafrost. It was NOT as bad as we feared!

The post-storm civil engineering projects did receive some county, state and federal aid, but were mostly self-financed by the City of Galveston. Much of the entire island-city was elevated 17 feet above sea level. That should take them through the next 100 years or so of “sea level rise due to AGW.” I might add that I’m a Texan, and spent many fond days and weeks in and around Galveston in my youth.

Note that the Galveston seawall was not built to hold back the rising seas due to AGW, but was to combat the storm surge from a large hurricane. Such storm surges reach 15 to 20 feet at times, and depend on many factors such as the size and intensity and speed of the storm, plus the timing of landfall and high or low tide.

It appears ridiculous to me that a predicted, but by no means certain, puny increase in sealevel of 10 to 20 inches due to AGW causes such agonizing, while the certainty of hurricane-induced storm surges of 15 to 20 feet does not.

Something really frosts me about Katrina. I read an article from Civil Engineering magazine a few years before Katrina that noted that parts of New Orleans were subsiding about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch per year due to municipal efforts to manage groundwater intrusion and runoff/flooding. Levee elevations were dropping as a result. Those levees, constructed by corrupt government agencies using sub-standard engineering, were likely not suitable to protect against CAT5 storms to begin with. With subsidence, that protection no doubt crashed below CAT 4 protection levels and eventually proved no defense against the CAT3 Katrina event.

The levees that failed were the weakest links in a string of very weak levee links. Politics, not Nature, failed New Orleans. And will continue to do so in the future. The re-insurers no doubt know this but will use it to create fear and make inordinate profits.

A clarification – IIRC, the Civil Engineering article only discussed the incidence and causes of the subsidence, not the politics of why that was happening. The statements on the political causes were my own opinion of the reasons for how the disaster came to be, not theirs. My apologies for any confusion.

“Right on the money, Sir. The flooding occurred because a levee failed.”

Yes, but, it seems obvious that that levee must have failed because of The Warming. The catstrophic increase in temperatures prior to Katrina evaporated the planning skills and budgets of the Army Corp while the horrific northward spread of malaria or something caused small rodents or perhaps invisible penguins to bore holes into it.

It is all connected. It is all catastrophic. And it is remarkably generous of the insurance companies to take on those risks for the little people, even if they are forced to raise their premiums to make that sacrifice for humanity.

Do I need to say ‘sarc’? It is getting to the point where it is getting hard to comment on these stories without being sarcastic.

Still think we are seeing a flat temperature graph?
(Edited by author 2 hours ago) ]]

Can someone explain briefly what the defects are in this “tamino chart” ?
It shows an increase in temperature from 5 sources, “three surface and two satellite”.
I want to explain to others why there is no warming, but I need a pin to bust this chart’s bubble. Anyone?

Interesting that clintboon could figure out in only ten minutes that WUWT is “supported” by the Heartland institute. Maybe next time he should try for twelve minutes.
………………
But even Sourcewatch only said that Anthony was listed as a speaker at Heartland events, not “supported” by.

This mountain-from-molehill tactic is Standard Operating Procedure there and is a mantra of many alarmists: Anyone who has spoken at the conference or dinner of a free-market think tank is “linked to” or “associated with” it, in their weasel words, which they know will be misinterpreted by their credulous readers as meaning “supported by.” Receiving a tiny speaker’s fee and travel expenses hardly counts as support. It’s not like the enormous fees that Gore et al. (including some supposedly neutral environmental journalists) get.

However, our side should bear in mind when replying that in some cases Heartland publishes books by various scorcher-scoffers like Anthony, which makes the association a bit closer–though not by much.

“Since the mid 70′s until today has changed that trend with a sharp rise in temperatures. The average increase in sea surface temperature for the 1948-2007 period varies, depending on the area of our Mediterranean coast, between 0 º C and 0.5 º C, while air temperature increased between 0.4 ° C and 0.9 º C.”

In other words, over a 60-year period the sea surface temperature had risen “between 0 º C and 0.5 º C ….” That’s nothing like what you reported it had said:

robertvdl says:
February 27, 2011 at 4:09 am

“Sea temperatures of surface waters are rising by around [should have been “up to”–RK] 0.5 degrees a year, … [should have been “over 60 years”]”

Roger Knights
I just reported what they said in the newspaper Typically Spanish . com. Those are not my words. After that I read the study and reported what they said, also not my words. So far I didn’t do anything wrong not even the grammar.

Jose Suro says:
February 27, 2011 at 8:42 am
“RMS is playing with our money and the insurance companies love it.”

Jose, I hope you notified the author of the Herald Tribune column about this forum. Very interesting information. I will watch for more articles from the Herald Tribune. I live just up the road from Sarasota. Thanks so much for the info.

kbray in california says:
February 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm
It shows an increase in temperature from 5 sources, “three surface and two satellite”.
I want to explain to others why there is no warming, but I need a pin to bust this chart’s bubble. Anyone?

To Jose Suro , You must have been reading my mind when you posted your comment five minutes after my own. Your story and the links you provided fit well with what I was trying to convey. I am glad that my tin foil hat was at the cleaners.

It would seem to me that if the insurers as a group calculate rates that are based on projections of a single firm and that overestimate major storm frequency by a factor of that are, and these insurers continue to do this over an extended period of time, they may be accruing a rather substantial liability in the form of a potential Clayton Act suit. In such a suit both the plaintiffs and the defendants would rely on statistics to make their case. The plaintiffs could use the simple binomial theorem that is taught in the first year of statistics The defendants would, I presume, have to counter with the sort of gobbledygook that Willis described. I wonder which would be more persuasive to a jury. Right now the defendants would have “political correctness” in their corner but what about five years from now? The Clayton act includes a provision for treble damages, which might make this more interesting to the sharks. I am not an attorney but I did take a class in antitrust law a few million years ago, and this smells like blood in the water to me.

Booker writes in his article:
When less partisan observers examined the paper, however, they were astonished. Although Nature has long been a leading propagandist for man-made climate change, this example seemed truly bizarre. Why had this strangely opaque study been based solely on the results of a series of computer models – mainly provided by the Hadley Centre and RMS – and not on any historical data about rainfall and river flows?

The paper described modeling at atmospheric conditions in Britain in 2000 and compared it to a hypothetical atmosphere with preindustrial levels of GHG’s to look at the statistics of heavy rainfall events. Their abstract and the news report, recognized that their work was not definitive, but the result was worth reporting.

The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

While the paper seeking to explain Britain’s floods in 2000, was based on computer simulations, the other nature paper published in this subject did compare data and simulations. The article is behind a pay wall, and I only have access to the abstract:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html
says the following:…Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming 16.

It is clear that data was consulted and compared with the models for the second paper on flooding, and it seems the model they used underestimated the difference. I wonder why Booker didn’t comment on this paper, which cannot be criticized for not using data? Was it because he was unaware of its exit, or was it because the showed an inconvenient truth.

Of course criticism of the use of computer modeling is a very convenient argument for “skeptics”. There is no other way than computer modeling to determine if GHG’s are responsible for trends that are observed or will extend into the future. Without modeling, mankind will be ignorant of what is to come, and those who oppose action to stop global warming would prefer that state of ignorance.

Can someone explain briefly what the defects are in this “tamino chart” ?
It shows an increase in temperature from 5 sources, “three surface and two satellite”.
I want to explain to others why there is no warming, but I need a pin to bust this chart’s bubble. Anyone?

A. (flippant answer) It’s from Tami’s site therefore it may be freely ignored as inconsequential.

B. There actually has been some warming, since around 1850 at the end of the Little Ice Age. This is normal natural fluctuation. It hasn’t gotten as warm yet as the Medieval Warm Period, which wasn’t as warm as the earlier Roman Warm Period. The interglacial is winding down, with the start of the next major ice age arguably overdue and coming soon, on geological time scales. Such drops can happen fairly quickly, might be in ten years, could happen a thousand years or more from now.

The “warming” matches the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a major influencer of “global climate,” specifically the temperature we notice here on land in this skimpy atmosphere. It has a warm phase that lasts about 30 years, the last one corresponded to the “unprecedented” rise in surface temperatures that has (C)AGW proponents in a lather. It’s in the cool phase now, and it certainly looks like we have about 20 to 30 years of cooling global temperatures coming. Just as the PDO and other natural factors lined up for that “unprecedented” late-20th century warming, now they are lining up for cooling. The rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations ain’t doing anything noticeable to counter that.

The surface temperature records are a mess. If we had anything else of that length and resolution to use, we would use that instead as the current records are hardly suitable for scientific purposes. For a sample of how bad the recording at individual stations can be, check out the Surfacestations project. From those records, various horrible things are done to the readings to generate the assorted “global average temperature” numbers. A sample is found at E.M. Smith’s site, specifically his analysis of NASA-GISS’ GIStemp (Hansen’s pride and joy) which includes related issues with the historic temperature records and the terrible numerical abuse they’ve suffered.

Various temperature datasets similarly processed by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Center) are also often mentioned. Along with the Climategate release of various CRU emails came programs and related data, including the famous “HARRY_READ_ME.txt” file (one link of many), compiled by some hapless programmer brought in to try to make sense of their data and code. During the analysis of that file, along with other searches for info on CRU’s workings, it was learned: they likely no longer have the older original records, don’t know what adjustments were made to them, thus the data has to be accepted on faith; the programs themselves are a garbled mess; and there are elements that are, yes indeed, completely made up.

Thus of the temperature readings taken in air on land, the raw data has issues, adjustments to those records are often questionable, and the further processing is normally atrocious. Plus the idea of using those to get a “global average” is somewhat absurd to begin with. First off, only about 30% of the globe is land, the oceans store much more heat than all of the atmosphere, we should be checking them to see where the climate is going. Also, the climate is not global. When analyzing data from individual stations and areas, as has been done by Willis Eschenbach and others, as presented on WUWT and elsewhere, we see long term trends of slight cooling, basically no change, and sometimes warming which is often tied to Urban Heat Island effects and land use changes (individual stations and small areas normally). And the much-touted homogenized pasteurized highly-processed global average numbers tend to show warming greater than what a careful examination of the real original data reveals, as if their processing was designed so that such “alarming” warming be shown regardless of the original data.

Dr. Roy Spencer is one of the keepers of the UAH satellite record, his site is well worth checking out. The latest monthly update was January 2011, there you’ll see the graph of the satellite record since its start in 1979. The PDO switched from warm to cool phase around 2008, so basically the warming shown on the chart corresponds to the 30 year PDO warm phase. Below that is a Global Sea Surface Temperature chart showing a decline for about 8 years now. The oceans cool, the land cools. The chill is coming.

The now-classic bits about the recent relative flatness of the global temperatures come from a BBC News Q&A from February 2010, from UEA-CRU’s Professor Phil Jones, post-Climategate when he was in a seemingly-conciliatory “CYA” phase:

B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C – Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

Also check out the “A” response, where you’ll see the “unprecedented” rate of late-20th century warming wasn’t unprecedented at all.

With 2010 on the books, things sure ain’t changed much. The atmospheric CO2 concentrations go up, the global temps are not matching suit. (C)AGW proponents are sputtering about “missing heat” and “tipping points” and how the effects of the warming are somehow currently masked but SUDDENLY the warming will rush back in and fry us all if we don’t IMMEDIATELY cut back our CO2 emissions, which we should do anyway just in case they are right (although they are CERTAIN they are right), etc, etc.

Sorry, but you can’t say there has been no warming. There has been warming, since the Little Ice Age, and during the recent warm phase of the PDO. And now there shall be cooling. While one might say that some of that warming was caused by humans, it’s been repeatedly shown on WUWT and elsewhere that it’d be a small amount of what was reported, and various natural factors can account for the total warming anyway. Certainly, above all else, all of the warming was not mankind’s fault, and especially was not due solely to our CO2 emissions (including equivalent ones as from methane).

The Big Message: There have been no temperature increases nor rates of temperature increases seen that are outside the bounds of natural variability.

Try Jo Nova’s site, specifically her Skeptic’s Handbook. Arguing flat-out “there is no warming” is a non-starter, thus “why” that is doesn’t work. Blaming the warming seen, modest as it is by historical and geological scales, solely on human “carbon” emissions is the problem, and where their faux “science” falls apart. That is where they are weakest, that is where you should first attack.

[[[ JohnWho says:
February 27, 2011 at 2:39 pm
kbray in california says:
February 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm
It shows an increase in temperature from 5 sources, “three surface and two satellite”.
I want to explain to others why there is no warming, but I need a pin to bust this chart’s bubble. Anyone?

How could you ever segregate out and remove:
1)”effects of natural variations from El Nino/La Nina”
2)”effects of natural variations from volcanoes”
3) “effects of natural variations from sunspots”
and quantify them individually from a single temperature reading?

It just sounds like some kinda voodoo to me or just guessing.

If these really are the “official temperatures”, I surmise that the problem arises from an accuracy issue attributed to the Urban Heat Index (UHI), Airport Jet Exhaust Index (AJEI), and some “correction of reading gaps”(CORG) based on some climate model calculations.

If there really is no substantial warming, then the worst explanation is just plain outright fraud. If that is the case, it’s gonna be nasty out there.

Thanks for the level heads on this site, I have learned a lot.
I once believed in “AL”, but now I ask questions.

“…Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming 16.”

* * *

Your quote from the abstract still does not pass scrutiny. While it said they were a “comparison of observed and multi-model simulations” it does not say how much data was used from both, and how it affected the outcome of the study.
For all we know, they could have thrown stones into the Thames for a day, came back, and ran 10 models that all ran off the previous model’s results.

And, as evident from Willis’ brilliant post, that’s exactly what they did.

Christopher Booker believes in intelligent design, that asbestos and talcum powder are chemically identical and that there is no proof of a link between passive smoking and lung cancer. His column on “amazongate” was so cringingly wrong in pretty much every detail that The Telegraph felt compelled to print a full page retraction. Basically, having him on side in any science debate counts as a loss.

“…..There is no other way than computer modeling to determine if GHG’s are responsible for trends that are observed or will extend into the future…..”

That’s complete nonsense. The standard statistical method is to look for correlation between two variables. If there is significant correlation then most likely there is some kind of causal relationship. This method is basic and easy to understand.
.
As the authors resorted to using multiple computer models in a complex and confusing tangle, it strongly suggests that the correlation between flooding and Co2 does not in fact exist. All they had to do was look at the graph.
But if they had come to the obvious conclusion that there is no correlation it would not help to boost the profits of RMS.
Chris

Jose Suro says:
February 27, 2011 at 8:42 am
“RMS is playing with our money and the insurance companies love it.”

Jose, I hope you notified the author of the Herald Tribune column about this forum. Very interesting information. I will watch for more articles from the Herald Tribune. I live just up the road from Sarasota. Thanks so much for the info.

Theo”

You’re most welcome Theo. I have not contacted the Herald about WUWT because I live in Pinellas County – maybe I should. The November 14 editorial I linked to above should be required reading for anyone interested in this climate change debacle.

The piece is very well researched and written, and it is not only a who’s who in this travesty, but also gives a detailed account of how the “science” gets manipulated (ignored is a better word) by these modelers to help justify themselves and big companies cashing in on billions of our hard earned dollars.

[[[ JohnWho says:
February 27, 2011 at 2:39 pm
kbray in california says:
February 27, 2011 at 12:18 pm
It shows an increase in temperature from 5 sources, “three surface and two satellite”.
I want to explain to others why there is no warming, but I need a pin to bust this chart’s bubble. Anyone?

How could you ever segregate out and remove:
1)”effects of natural variations from El Nino/La Nina”
2)”effects of natural variations from volcanoes”
3) “effects of natural variations from sunspots”
and quantify them individually from a single temperature reading?

It just sounds like some kinda voodoo to me or just guessing.

Tamino used the estimated forcing for volcanoes and the El Nino index as his input data, and processed them with a multiple regression, accounting for time lags, to get a best fit for their influence on temperature. Tamino knows statistics better than you or I do. If you don’t accept what he did as reasonable, it would make your case better if you could cite an expert that explained what is wrong with what he did:

Hence for each temperature data set, we’ll do a multiple regression of the data since 1975 (or whatever we’ve got) as a function of MEI, volcanic forcing, a 2nd-order Fourier series, and a linear time trend. We’ll allow for a time lag in the influence of MEI and volcanic forcing. Then we’ll take the original data and remove the estimated part due to MEI, volcanic forcing, and annual cycle. Finally we’ll put them all on a common baseline, using 1980.0 to 2010.0. This will give us an “adjusted” data set (a name which may give some people fits), one which is adjusted to compensate for el Nino, volcanoes, and annual cycle residue.

If these really are the “official temperatures”, I surmise that the problem arises from an accuracy issue attributed to the Urban Heat Index (UHI), Airport Jet Exhaust Index (AJEI), and some “correction of reading gaps”(CORG) based on some climate model calculations.

If there really is no substantial warming, then the worst explanation is just plain outright fraud. If that is the case, it’s gonna be nasty out there.

Thanks for the level heads on this site, I have learned a lot.
I once believed in “AL”, but now I ask questions.

If you are asking real questions, you should pay attention to the answers.
The important thing to note, as Tamino points out, is that there is no urban heat island effect associated with the satellite data, and it still agrees pretty well with the thermometer based data. This indicates that the temperature adjustments made to correct anomalies in the thermometer data, due to changes in equipment, human error, and to eliminate the UHI have been reasonably successful.

Despite the individual stations that have been cited, which show an apparent UHI effect, comparisons of purely rural data, with the total world temperature data, show that the impact of UHI on the global data has been negligible.

“…..There is no other way than computer modeling to determine if GHG’s are responsible for trends that are observed or will extend into the future…..”

That’s complete nonsense. The standard statistical method is to look for correlation between two variables. If there is significant correlation then most likely there is some kind of causal relationship. This method is basic and easy to understand.
Chris, your statement is completely wrong . Correlation indicates that there is a possible relationship between 2 variables. It is not an indicator of which variable is a cause, and the cause could be that a third variable, which is not included in the correlation. No real scientist believes that correlation by itself determines cause and effect. In the real scientific world cause and effect are determined by a theory which must be consistent with the explanation of other phenomena in addition to the phenomenon that is being examined. This is how science has advanced over the centuries.

To claim that correlation can be used to predict the future also doesn’t make sense. There is no future data that can be used to set up a correlation. Without a physical theory, and a model calculation there is no way to predict what will happen in the future.
.As the authors resorted to using multiple computer models in a complex and confusing tangle, it strongly suggests that the correlation between flooding and Co2 does not in fact exist. All they had to do was look at the graph.
But if they had come to the obvious conclusion that there is no correlation it would not help to boost the profits of RMS.
Chris

Sorry but you are absolutely wrong about the non existence of correlation in this case. Eschenbach’s graph, of the maximum precipitation amount at any station in the area, in a 24 hour is a noisy one from which one cannot deduce any sort of trend. Different measures are used to indicate the frequency of heavy rainfall events and flooding, in the scientific literature, which I pointed out in my references.

The use of a computer model, which includes the physics of weather and climate. Since the models necessarily contain empirical factors that have a degree of uncertainty,the use of multiple models provide a means of understanding the level uncertainty in the answer they provide.

“…Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming 16.”

* * *

Your quote from the abstract still does not pass scrutiny. While it said they were a “comparison of observed and multi-model simulations” it does not say how much data was used from both, and how it affected the outcome of the study.
For all we know, they could have thrown stones into the Thames for a day, came back, and ran 10 models that all ran off the previous model’s results.

And, as evident from Willis’ brilliant post, that’s exactly what they did.

The purpose of an abstract is to outline what was done and what result was obtained. If you want more detail, you need to pay to read the paper, or go to a university library to get access to it. The abstract reported that they compared model output to data, and got close to the same results for the output representing the real world data.

In fact, if you read my post carefully, you would have understood that Willis Eschenbach were commenting the abstract from a different paper on flooding, looking only at England and Wales, from the one I posted. It was published in the same issue of Nature. In that case the abstract did not mention real data, but it is clear from the supplementary data linked on the Nature web page containing the abstract, that the full paper must have some comparison with real data, because some graphs were shown which involved real data.

Eschenbach criticized the paper on England and Wales without reading it. He himself said he only consulted the abstract and the supplementary data page, which he obviously didn’t look at it carefully,because he claimed that no reference to data was present in the paper. Under the circumstance, I don’t see how one could give Eschenbach’s criticism, or Bookers echo of it very much credence.

Eschenbach criticized the paper on England and Wales without reading it. He himself said he only consulted the abstract and the supplementary data page, which he obviously didn’t look at it carefully,because he claimed that no reference to data was present in the paper. Under the circumstance, I don’t see how one could give Eschenbach’s criticism, or Bookers echo of it very much credence.

But now I’ve had a chance to look at the other paywalled Nature paper in the same issue, entitled Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000, by Pardeep Pall, Tolu Aina, Dáithí A. Stone, Peter A. Stott, Toru Nozawa, Arno G. J. Hilberts, Dag Lohmann and Myles R. Allen (hereinafter Pall2011). The supplementary information is available here, and contains much of the concepts of the paper.

As is common, the supplementary info is available for free. The link to it was provided by Mr. Eschenbach. As he said, it contains much of the concepts of the paper, thus those without access to the paper still can see at least that much. As is customary, the abstract is free, it can be found here, which is also the paywall link.

I have re-read Mr. Eschenbach’s article, read all comments he posted there. Nowhere did he say he only consulted the abstract and the supplementary data page, as you have said he did. (BTW there are 13 pages in the supplementary file, thus I wonder if you have even looked at it.)

It appears, sir, that you owe Mr. Eschenbach, an honorable man, an apology and a retraction.

As a commentator who tries to rely on the proper principles of science to challenge some of the more mindless orthodoxies of our time, I am used to receiving the kind of abuse typified in Stuart MacDonald’s post above. Usually I pass it by, But on this occasion, one of Mr MacDonald’s claims is so grotesquely inaccurate that I must correct it. He claims that a column I wrote on ‘Amazongate’ was ‘so cringingly wrong in pretty much every detail that The Telegraph felt compelled to print a full page retraction’. I’m afraid Mr MacDonald has got the wrong newspaper. It was not the Telegraph but the Sunday Times which published a (half-page) retraction of what it had written about the IPCC and the Amazon, The exposes of this bizarre example of IPCC malfeasance I published in the Sunday Telegraph (linked to by WUWT) were exhaustively researched and entirely accurate. No apology by the Telegraph was either asked for or given.

“As a commentator who tries to rely on the proper principles of science to challenge some of the more mindless orthodoxies of our time, I am used to receiving the kind of abuse typified in Stuart MacDonald’s post above. Usually I pass it by, But on this occasion, one of Mr MacDonald’s claims is so grotesquely inaccurate that I must correct it. He claims that a column I wrote on ‘Amazongate’ was ‘so cringingly wrong in pretty much every detail that The Telegraph felt compelled to print a full page retraction’. I’m afraid Mr MacDonald has got the wrong newspaper. It was not the Telegraph but the Sunday Times which published a (half-page) retraction of what it had written about the IPCC and the Amazon, The exposes of this bizarre example of IPCC malfeasance I published in the Sunday Telegraph (linked to by WUWT) were exhaustively researched and entirely accurate. No apology by the Telegraph was either asked for or given.”

[snip] I apologise.

That said, I still stand by my point, historically you do seem to end up on the wrong side of any scientific controversy.